


Director's Cut

by slightly_ajar



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Blood, Team as Family, mentions of medical procedures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22033861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightly_ajar/pseuds/slightly_ajar
Summary: "The ear splitting scream of an ambulance is impossible to ignore when one passes you on the street but when you are in one, Bozer found, the sound isn’t what’s forefront in your mind."Mac is hurt, Bozer finds a way to cope.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 37





	Director's Cut

The ear splitting scream of an ambulance is impossible to ignore when one passes you on the street but when you are in one, Bozer found, the sound isn’t what’s forefront in your mind. 

The wail of the siren was a muted cry in Bozer’s awareness, a muffled noise shoved to the back of his consciousness; other things demanded his attention. 

For complicated reasons Bozer didn’t care about Desi was driving, swerving around corners and unyielding traffic like a bat out of hell while yelling abuse at the people in her way. Riley was beside her on her laptop doing something to the traffic lights. Somewhere at the very back of Bozer’s mind he made a note to ask Desi to write some of her curses down, she’d spat swear words and colourful insults in combinations he’d never heard before and he wanted to remember them for his own personal use. Maybe he would put them in a script. 

He still wrote scripts. He hadn’t completely let go of that dream. The world was a complex and unpredictable place. He was a spy now but in five years time? In ten? Who knew what would happen. If someone had told him five years ago that he would soon discover his best friend since childhood was a spy and that he would find himself working alongside him for a clandestine organisation saving lives on a regular basis Bozer would have laughed until he wheezed. And yet here he was. 

There were times he couldn’t help seeing life through a director’s eye. He’d find himself planning camera positions or lighting effects without realising he was doing it. And there were times when being able to detach himself from a situation by looking at it as a scene from a script helped him compartmentalise what was happening, helped him cope. Right then sirens were wailing, Desi was shouting, the paramedic was buzzing around Mac and Bozer was grasping his best friends hand as a tangible reminder to him to hold on. Hold on! 

“It’s going to be okay, man,” Bozer told Mac. “Desi’s going at warp factor nine so we’ll be at the hospital before you know it.” Mac looked towards Bozer but his unfocused gaze went straight through him. His rapid breaths were fogging up the oxygen mask covering his face and Bozer knew he was too lost in pain and shock to hear him. 

If he was shooting this as a sequence for a movie, Bozer thought as his grip on Mac tightened, he’d de-saturate the colours, bringing everything down to greyscale with hints of tone, and focus in on his and Mac’s joined hands, maybe leaving the blood covering their fingers, stark and red, as the only bright part of the scene. Because all that mattered to Bozer was that connection, him and Mac holding onto each other, him offering Mac comfort and giving him an anchor point of the people who loved him. 

Bozer was a demonstrative person. He liked hugs and fist bumps and back slaps. He liked hugging the people he cared about because you have to let them know you care, you know? Things can happen, people can be taken away, so he needed the people in his life to know that he loved them. Mac wasn’t naturally as physically effusive as Bozer but he didn’t mind Bozer’s tactile nature and responded whenever he moved in for a hug. But they’d never held hands. Not even as children. Bozer held hands with Leanna all the time but that was different. He went on dates with Leanna, took romantic walks on the beach with her and they snuck kisses in the Phoenix parking lot. She was his girlfriend. Holding Mac’s hand right then didn’t feel uncomfortable though. It felt necessary. 

Desi yelled something at a white van as they sped past it, something about ‘toad licking’ and a series of words that Bozer had never heard before that he suspected might be Swedish. The paramedic pressed down with a bandage in his hands and Mac arched off the gurney with a cry. The ambulance sirens called. Bozer held Mac’s hand. He imagined a shot panning away from the tear rolling into Mac’s hairline and towards their twined fingers. The dialogue and sound effects would fade to a background murmur until the only thing in sharp relief was his and Mac’s hands gripping the other with love and desperation. Both hands white knuckled. Both stained with blood. Bozer’s hold tightening as Mac’s began to slacken. 

And end scene. 

  


The waiting room sequence would be a montage. Time spent in waiting rooms was painfully dull and interminable, no audience wanted to watch people waiting, waiting, waiting in real time. He wouldn’t show the progression of the hands of the clock on the wall, audiences found that kind of obviousness insulting, he would show them that time was passing rather than telling them. There would be shots of the light coming in through the window moving across the walls and of medical staff passing the waiting room as they worked through their shifts. He’d show himself tapping his fingers against his thighs and pulling out his phone, considering it, then putting it back in his pocket. Scrolling through Instagram was one way to pass the time when you’re in the line at the Post Office or waiting for your order at the deli but looking at pictures of cute dogs when your oldest friend was being operated on felt inappropriate. 

Mac would be fine. He was a little banged up and would need a few days off his feet to recover but he would be okay. Bozer’s decision was final and he would not accept another outcome. He’d already lost one brother on a day filled with blood and sirens and he would not lose another. Mac would be fine. He had to be. 

Bozer turned his thoughts and the camera he was directing in his imagination to Riley. She was motionless in the seat beside him, her hands pressed together, her brow creased in thought. Her look was the one Bozer called her ‘Prison Face’. He’d never told her that’s what he called the expression she wore whenever she withdrew to a stoic place inside herself but he felt sure that face and the withdrawal that went with it were how she’d coped with being in super max. He didn’t like to think of her in jail. The idea of his kind, vital, mischievous friend locked away in that terrible place made him shudder. Riley would feature in his montage with shots of her in her chair, still but for small shifts in her position. There’d be a shot of her looking away into the mid-distance, pressing a hand against her lips, pushing her fingers through her hair with her eyes closed, absentmindedly circling a finger around and around a button on her leather jacket. 

“Ri?” Bozer said, not sure what he was asking. 

Riley looked at him and gave a small smile. She leaned over to briefly rest her chin on Bozer's shoulder. He leant his head against hers for a moment, enjoying her closeness and support. 

“I’ve been thinking,” Bozer said as the thought occurred to him, “don’t some hospitals take blood donations from relatives of patients? We should do that.” 

“I don’t know if this one does, Boze, but that’s a good idea, we should ask someone,” Riley answered. 

Doing that could help someone. Someone in the past had donated blood that had gone on to help Mac and it seemed right to Bozer that he did the same thing for another person in the future. It was like magical thinking, Bozer concluded, he could put something kind and selfless into the world to increase the good that was out there and counteract the bad. Kind of like karma with needles and test tubes. And it would fit in his hypothetical movie. There had been blood on his hand in the opening scene and blood would feature again in the montage sequence but in a clinical, controlled environment, given not taken, like a theme about care and healing. 

“Sir, if you just wait in here,” a nurse held the waiting room door open and ushered James inside, “the doctor will be with you shortly.” 

James’ eyes were wide and wild. He was flustered and unkempt, like he’d slept in his clothes. “The phone call said that my son is in surgery,” he insisted, “I need to know how he is.” 

“Someone will be with you soon,” the nurse said, kind but firm, “why don’t you take a seat with your friends?” 

“I...” James pulled at one of his rolled shirtsleeves and Bozer could see the end of a piece of medical tape stuck to his inner elbow. 

“Sir,” Desi stepped forward, “maybe you could take a seat, we’re expecting news soon and the doctor will know to find you in here.” 

“You’re quite right, Agent Nguyen,” James nodded with slow reluctance and sat heavily into one of the chairs lining the room, swaying slightly before righting himself with a slow blink as he settled into his seat. Bozer suspected that he’d come straight from a chemotherapy session without taking time to rest. “I’m used to being the head of a powerful organisation,” James said to no one in particular after the nurse left the room, “I usually get the answers I want when I ask for them. Here I’m just another worried father demanding news, it’s quite a learning curve.” He flopped back and tilted his head to look up at the ceiling. “I don’t like it.” 

Desi watched him intently from next to the window. Her chin was raised and her jaw set as if she was preparing to take criticism. What had happened to Mac wasn’t her fault but Bozer knew she was going over and over their actions that morning searching for what she could have done differently. 

“I’m getting coffee,” Bozer announced and stood. He needed to not be looking at the same four walls for a while and the team needed for something to happen to break the monotony stifling the room. Bozer usually used food to offer affection and to make connections but he was a long way from his kitchen. Peanut M&Ms’s from the vending machine weren’t going to get the job done so he would have to reach out using coffee. Even if they didn’t have much of it people found comfort in the ordinary act of preparing a hot drink. Familiarity was soothing, rituals had power and the rites of sugar, milk, stir were small but potent. “I’ll be right back.” 

  


Bozer walked back from the coffee machine carefully so the cups balanced in the cardboard tray in his hands didn’t spill. One of the mugs had a small amount of coffee swilling around in the lip of it’s plastic lid but other than that the rest of the liquid had stayed where it was supposed to be and Bozer was taking that as a win. 

When he got back to the waiting room he found Desi pacing again. She was tense. Restless. One hand twitching up to where her weapons usually were. 

“Here, let me help you.” Riley pushed herself up out of her chair and walked up to grab two of the coffees Bozer was carrying. “I’ll, you know,” she said, jerking her head towards where James was sat. 

Riley’s relationship with James was different from Bozer’s. James had only ever know Riley as a tech genius and talented agent. Bozer, on the other hand, was James’ son’s childhood friend who’d dressed up as an Ewok for Halloween for three years running in Elementary school. Bozer worried that to James, no matter what he did, he would always be that goofy kid who Mac had caused mischief with. 

“Coffee?” Riley stood in front of James holding up a cup. 

“Yes, yes please, that would be,” James waved a hand in a circle as he searched for an adjective, “nice.” Riley handed James one of the cups she was holding and sat down next to him. 

Bozer was self-aware enough to admit to himself that he was a little jealous of Riley’s ease with James. He was less comfortable with his feelings of jealousy surrounding Riley and Mac’s being in the Reformed Dad’s Club together. A childish, needy part of Bozer insisted that Mac was _his_ friend, _he_ knew him before his dad left, _he_ should be the one Mac confided in about James. He wasn’t proud of that petulant side of himself and refused to listen to it whenever it stamped it’s foot demanding attention. 

As Riley took a coffee to James Bozer walked up to Desi, holding her drink out at arm’s length like a peace offering. He sidled up to her slowly, making a show of checking to see if it was safe to approach. Desi smiled at his teasing dramatics and reached out for the drink. 

“Thanks, Boze.” 

Bozer knew exactly how Desi would feature in his waiting room sequence. He would show her pacing the room with snap shots of her by the door, pausing to see who was moving in the corridor, passing the line of chairs, looking out of the window as if searching for a flash of sunlight reflecting off a sniper’s rifle, spinning on her heel to take the journey all over again. 

It wasn’t that Desi couldn’t be still or patient. Bozer had seen her wait for Mac to finish a build and during steak outs without a twitch of impatience but that was when her turn at activity was coming. She could wait calmly as long as she knew she would get her chance to participate in what was happening. Once they’d arrived at the hospital and handed Mac over to the doctors there was nothing else for her to do. Her skills weren’t useful or needed. She was helpless. That pained her, driving her to move to try and outpace her impotent ache. She took a tentative sip of her drink and Bozer knew he would definitely put a shot of the deliberating look she had on her face as she decided if the coffee was drinkable in his montage. 

“So Desi,” Bozer rested his weight against the wall beside where Desi had stationed herself, “I have to tell you, I loved the curses you were shouting at the traffic on the way here, they were very...inventive.” 

“Thank you.” Desi acknowledged the compliment with a tip of her cup.

“There was one insult you yelled that sounded like a cross between something Gordon Ramsey and the Swedish Chef would say. Was it Dutch or something?” 

“Oh that.” Desi’s lips quirked with amusement, “it was in Slovene.” 

“What did it mean?” 

“It’s accusing someone of enjoying time with their goats in a way that isn’t usual, or sanitary.” 

“Oh. Ew!” 

Desi laughed. 

“You’ll have to write it out phonetically for me,” Bozer said, “it’ll be a good thing to holler at people who don’t use their turn signal on the freeway.” 

“I will. It also works if someone cuts into the line in front of you at the coffee shop.” 

Bozer took a sip of his drink and realised why Desi had pulled the face she did when she’d first tasted the coffee. He wondered about and quickly dismissed the idea of having footage of Mac in the operating theatre inter-spliced with shots of the team in the waiting room during his montage. Images of scalpels and heart rate monitors might add jeopardy, he decided, but that’s not what the sequence was meant to be about. He wanted to show the awful tedium of waiting and of being removed from a life or death battle when the life that was being fought for was one you treasured. He was just thinking about what music if any he would use for the soundtrack to the scene when a nurse opened the door of the waiting room and asked for the family of Angus MacGyver. 

“If you’d like to follow me,” the nurse said. The nurse was male, of average height, good looking in a Sunday walks with a dog in the park way that women seemed to like and that Bozer felt he had similar vibes of. Bozer didn’t mind that the nurse was male, of course he didn’t, but he’d cast a woman in the role in his movie. His call to central casting would ask for an actress who was slightly older, slightly round and completely motherly. Someone who looked like they would draw you to their bosom, call you sugar and ask if you were hungry. He would welcome having that feeling of maternal reassurance with him when he found out if Mac was okay or not. If Mac wasn’t all right, well...even super spies sometimes need their moms. 

  


He would shoot the team walking along the corridor to Mac’s room from behind. There would be one continuous shot – no edits – following them around the winding corridor, past the nurses opening and closing cubicle curtains and towards where Mac lay. 

“He’s still under the effects of the anaesthetic so he won’t wake up for about half an hour but you can stay with him if you want,” the nurse said. He nodded at their thank you’s and left the room. 

Everyone stood still for a moment, hesitant, taking in the sight of Mac’s deeply unconscious form. 

He had bruises along a cheek bone and across his knuckles and he was pale beneath them; the sheets hid the majority of his injuries. An IV line snaked into his arm attached to a bag of clear liquid. The thought occurred to Bozer that he would put a bag of blood on the IV stand instead to continue his movies’ theme. He held tight to that idea like a safe harbour among the noisy, frightening thoughts churning like white water rapids in his mind. He could feel himself floundering in distress at the terrible sight of his best friend in a hospital bed and focusing on the mise en scene of his movie helped him find a point of stability. It wasn’t a rational thought exactly but it was something to focus on to hold him steady in amongst his panic. Bozer breathed and felt himself settle. 

James moved first, walking to stand next to Mac and lay a hand onto his shoulder. 

“They say people can hear what’s happening don’t they?” Riley said. “That when patients are, um, sleeping they can hear what the people around them are saying.” 

“So we should chat to Mac so he’ll sit up later and tell us that he had a dream and we were all in it like Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz?” Desi gave Riley a gentle smile. 

Bozer had a flash of inspiration. In his mind’s eye he used artistic licence to move Mac’s bed to stand beside the wall with the window behind him to echo the scenery in the final shot of The Wizard of Oz. He would stand everyone around the bed just where Dorothy’s friends had been, placing someone behind Mac’s head rather than having them look in through the window given that they were twelve stories up. When Mac opened his eyes he would look around at them all and know that he was home. Bozer resisted the urge to hold up his hands to create a frame to view the room through. 

“So who’s going to be who?” Desi asked. “Who’s the scarecrow, the cowardly lion and the tin man?” 

“I am not being Toto,” Riley insisted. 

“Matty is kind of the Wizard,” Desi said, “she’s the one behind the curtain pulling levers, pressing buttons and making things happen, except...” she looked over at James. 

“Nobody is just one of the characters, they’re archetypes, we learned about it in film school," Bozer said. He walked to stand next to the bed and reached down to hold Mac’s hand. It had been washed clean of blood – as had his own – and the image of his hand gripping Mac’s would serve as a neat bookend to his movie’s opening scene. “Archetypes represent traits, characteristics or types of people – the hero, the caring person, the smart person, the brave person – no one is a hundred percent any of them, we all have different aspects of them in us.” He looked up to find his friends staring at him. “What? I know stuff!” 

Riley held both hands up as if she was surrendering. “No one said you didn’t, Boze.” 

“Then why are you all looking at me like I’ve just started talking about the square root of an isosceles triangle?” Bozer was indignant and a little insulted. 

“We’re just surprised.” Riley and Desi drifted over to stand around Mac’s bed, Riley slipped her arm through Bozer’s to say sorry. “It’s been a long day and no one was expecting a lesson on cinematic theory.” 

Bozer grunted to let Riley know he’d accepted her apology. “I never understood the end of that movie when I was a kid,” he said, thinking back to Christmases watching The Wizard of Oz with his parents. “Dorothy gets back from Oz and talks about how if she’s going to look for her heart’s desire again she’ll go searching in her own back yard. I mean, what will she find in her garden in Kansas? Dust and corn. She’s just been to a beautiful, magical place and she’s looking for happiness in a yard full of pigs that could eat her. It made no sense to me.” It would be like, young Bozer had thought, going to LA and deciding to come home and make movies in Mission City. 

“But you don’t think that anymore?” James asked. 

“I got older and I started to think that Dorothy wasn’t talking about looking for a _thing_. She’s talking about knowing who she is, what she needs, what she believes and who her family are. That stuff is inside you and you won’t find it anywhere else. It kind of is in your own back yard, not in a place you’ll need Ruby slippers to get to.” 

“Boze, that’s very deep," Desi said. 

“I have my moments," Bozer replied with a smug lift to his chin. 

They pulled up some chairs and arranged themselves around Mac’s bed, Bozer nudging his seat into place with a foot so he didn’t have to let go of Mac’s hand. As they sat and talked Bozer started to think about how he would finish his movie. He could have a shot hover above the bed as they the group sat there together, one that slowly panned away from them leaving them behind as they talked and laughed, or one that drifted up and away out of the window and into the sunny day outside. He decided that his movie wasn’t going to end in any of those ways. He was going to make a special edition. It would be one of those films that was three hours and forty seven minutes long and came in a four disc DVD box set that had a cardboard case with original art on. Not a ninety minute fast moving blockbuster that studios liked as summer hits. A director’s cut. It would feature footage of Mac sat up in his bed eating the pizza the team had managed to smuggle into his room, bickering with Bozer as he pushed his wheelchair along the hospital corridor, at home sat carefully by the fire pit being teased by the others as they drank beer while he was left holding a soft drink because of the medication he was on and back at work looking uncomfortable as his colleagues fussed over him to celebrate his return. 

The credits wouldn’t roll after the scene in Mac’s hospital room because that wasn’t the end. Nowhere near. The credits would scroll along the screen eventually but they weren’t the point of the movie. The movie was about the story, full of archetypes and tropes - boy meets girl and heroes journeys; redemption arcs and coming of age adventures; comedies, tragedies and rebirths – and the story was unwritten and unfolding day by day. 

The story was the rest of their lives. 

Cut. 

**Author's Note:**

> Bozer asks why everyone is looking at him like he’s talking about the square root of an isosceles triangle after he’s been describing archetypes because in The Wizard of Oz when the Scarecrow gets his brain the first thing he says is: “The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side.”


End file.
